Books & Articles

Professor Amin Saikal is the Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East Central Asia) and Professor of Political Science at the Australian National Univeristy. His article on the pro-democracy Arab popular uprisings has been published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs on the background of the Arab spring. The article highlights the importance of viewing the recent events as "part of a transition from a dictatorial past to a politically pluralist future."

‘Has Asia been doing enough in leading world opinion on how to manage, and in particular not to mismanage, the global challenges we face today, including that of terrorism, violence, and global injustice?’ asked Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen at a forum in Bangkok in 2007.1 Much has been said and written about the ‘rise’ of Asia; very little about Asia’s contribution to global governance.2 To be sure, many Asian nations, not just the major Asian powers of China, Japan and India, but also South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, are demanding a greater voice in international affairs, both for themselves and for the region. Asian views of international order are changing in keeping with the region’s economic and political ascendancy.

How is international order built, and how is its legitimacy established, in a world in which political and economic foundations are rapidly shifting? The geography of power is being transformed, in particular by the rise of China. What are the consequences of the rise of major new powers for the structure and the functioning of the international system? In the past, seismic changes, associated with great wars or great financial crises, led to a disorientation about the moral foundations of society, domestically and internationally; led to confusion and uncertainty about values, not just in a technical sense (can we believe in gold as money, in the pound sterling, in the US dollar?) but also in a broader sense: What is the best way of ordering an economy, a society, or a polity? How can policies be legitimated?

How does the Iraq War affect the future world order? What kinds of problems has this war brought about, and what is needed to remedy these problems, so as to reconstruct an order in Iraq and beyond? The present volume is a collection of essays exploring these issues, written by leading scholars in their respective fields. Importantly, the Iraq War has caused numerous long-term security and economic problems in Iraq (Chapter 1) and in the Middle East (Chapter 2). In addition, this war represents a failure of the Western liberals’ project of establishing a liberal market democracy, and these liberals are likely to repeat the same error elsewhere in the future (Chapter 3). Moreover, the war underlines the crisis in global governance today, but the idea of reforming the United Nations has some serious limitations (Chapter 4). With regard to the issue of terrorism, “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” has been operating in the field for some time, and thus Iraq will likely remain an important global center of terrorism in the foreseeable future (Chapter 5).

Human security is a new paradigm for security, development and justice. Since it was first proposed in the 1990s, there has been an endless debate between its proponents and critics, and even among its advocates, over the meaning and utility of the concept. What is important now is to move the concept beyond the realm of theory and explore its practical applications, considering possible policy perspectives and implications. This book suggests new practical applications of the human security concept, such as human security mapping, the human security governance index and human security impact assessment. Using Northeast India and Orissa as case studies, the methodology introduced in this path-breaking book can be applied to conflict zones worldwide. By designating the individual rather than the state as the referent object of security, human security is emerging as a framework that can serve as a means to evaluate threats, foresee crises, analyze causes of discord and propose solutions entailing a redistribution of responsibilities.

Nivien Saleh, Third World Citizens and the Information Technology Revolution, (Palgrave Macmillian, 2010).

This book challenges the widely-held view that the information technology (IT) revolution has empowered people in the Third World. Tracing the making of the global IT regime, it shows that governments and corporations of the wealthy countries dominated this process, systematically excluding representatives of low-income countries, who might have embraced alternative visions of the global information society. Once the IT regime was in place, these same actors pressured Third World countries into conforming to it. In the case of Egypt, these pressures resulted in a new ministry for IT, which helped integrate the country into a world economy governed by the rules of the haves. Ordinary Egyptians were, of course, not asked for their opinions.

Amitav Acharya, Asian Approaches to International Order and Global Governance: Conflict and Convergence, Think-piece prepared for the S.T. LEE PROJECT ON GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Workshop on “Global Governance: Asia and the New World Order”, December 12-13, 2010, Beijing.

Has Asia been doing enough in leading the world opinion on how to manage, and in particular not to mismanage, the global challenges we face today, including that of terrorism, violence, and global injustice," asked Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen at a forum in Bangkok in 2007. Much has been said and written about the rise of Asia, very little about Asia‟s contribution to global governance. To be sure, many Asian nations, not just the major Asian power like China, Japan, or India, but also South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, all demand a greater voice in international affairs, both for themselves as well as for the region. Asian views of international order are changing in keeping with the region‟s economic and political ascendancy.

Amitav Acharya, Asian Regional Institutions and the Possibilities for
Socializing the Behavior of States, Asian Development Bank Working Paper Series on Regional Economic Integration, No. 82, June 2011.

Departing from the traditional yardsticks for measuring the performance and effectiveness of regional institutions, this paper proposes a new framework to investigate their effect in the socialization (i.e. internalization of group norms by newcomers) of new members. Called Type III internalization, it represents a middle ground between Type I (i.e. member states simply acting according to group expectations, even if they may not agree with them), and Type II (i.e. states transforming themselves by adopting the interests and identities of the group) internalization. In Type III internalization, states act both instrumentally and normatively. While their interests and values do not change permanently, there is enough change to induce substantially new kinds of cooperative behavior, in trade and security. Type III internalization is non-legalistic and consensual, moving at a pace in which everyone is comfortable, but there is no danger of backtracking. New members moderate their competitive instincts and pursue common objectives. The impact of institutional norms such as “open regionalism” and “cooperative security” transmitted through institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the ASEAN Regional Forum on Viet Nam, India, and the People's Republic of China attests to the existence of a Type III internalization.